Redesign boosts speed and makes it easier for people to share interests on Google's oft-maligned social network.

Today, the search giant announced that it’s redesigning Google+ and putting the focus on two of the features Google+ users like the best: Communities and Collections.

This move was telegraphed by Google VP Bradley Horowitz this summer, when he officially ended Google+’s role as the social layer for Google products. At the time, he said Google+ would start focusing more on making it easier for people to share their interests on the network.

Google said it has spent the last few months gathering feedback about what users like, and the redesign reflects that. Google said Communities, which are forums for discussions about topics of interest, are thriving, with more than 1.2 million “joins” a day. Collections, introduced in May to give people and brands a way to organize their posts with topic categories, are growing even faster, Google said.

In the new design, Communities and Collections have been given a more prominent location, at the top of the tab list. In the previous design, the links to those features were buried in the Home pull-down menu. The new look is also much less cluttered than the old:

A Google spokesperson described the changes:

We’ve made it easier to find Communities and Collections in search, post to Communities and Collections and browse all your favorite content in a beautiful new home stream. The new web experience loads fast and works beautifully on the smallest mobile screens and the biggest desktop displays.

The new experience on the web is rolling out today and is opt-in. Look for a “Let’s go” link in the lower left-hand corner. New iOS and Android apps are expected to launch in the coming days.

It remains to be seen, of course, whether Google’s focus on users’ shared interests will lead to more marketers using the platform. Many obituaries have been written for Google+ as a marketing tool, but this could be a sign of life.